Bloodgold - Deeds of Iomhar (swearing)
Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:42 pm
Prologue 1
Now
Fuck this.
Iomhar watched with detachment the warrior slowly kneel down next to him, armour holding him up after the arrow suddenly appeared deep in his face. There was little blood, strange, from where half of the oiled shaft stuck from just to the side of his nose. He grimaced as the man slowly toppled into the snow drift behind the shack. Not in sorrow, he was on his own now.
He lurched from his place of hiding and half scrambled half ran across the gap between the buildings, muddy snow slipping between his feet as he dove, well, fell if he was honest with himself, behind the latrine as arrows skipped of the buildings frame behind him.
Thorfinn, his brother, had insisted on the counter attack. Why? The women. His wife-to-be particularly. Foolhardy to risk themselves like this half of the lasses were captured prizes from other raids themselves. What happened to “to the victor goes the spoils”? The other thing Thorfinn had insisted on was Iomhar coming along, for “morale”. Bastard. But how could he refuse in front of his fathers men. Well now the women were still lost, Thorfin was slowly cooling on the mud and his fathers warband were all but gone as well.
Was he sorry for what he’d done? Yes. No. Did it matter? Thorfin had led them in wild charge up the main way of the settlement with half the warband. The other half of the men sent back to the waiting boats ran without looking back. Some old hands there. Reckon they knew a suicide when they saw one.
The charge ended under a hail of arrows and thrown fire and ice from casters so far hidden amongst the raiders. Fully eight mens souls torn away by the icy winds in those few instants. He had dragged his brother to the left as the steam of fire and ice covered them, the other one surviving warrior following them. Thorfinn was cursing all the gods and it had nothing to do with the fresh burns to his right side, it was because Iomhar had an iron grip on his belt.
“Let me go you coward! Those bastards will eat their own cocks if they’ve harmed Meg!“
“Don’t be a fucking idiot. We’ve one chance now to get out. They think us dead. Use that tiny brain for one fucking moment and you’ll see we can live!” There were perhaps 30 of the dragon cult out there. Death enough for them all, even if his father had suspected it wasn’t death they were after...at least for he and his brother...probably something worse.
Thorfinn broke from Iomhars grip and he had to dive to catch him before he ran out and gave thier position away. For years his brothers golden hero routine had worn thin on Iomhar. And now as all their lives were to be thrown away on some woman, enough was enough. As he pulled him back his long knife came round and entered his brothers neck. The sound of steel grinding on rock as the knife jarred his hand. Shit. He has lodged the blade in his neck bones. His brothers head thrown back wide eyes and a choking sound came from his throat. Taking the knife out he rammed it back in further forward and then tore outwards spraying Thorfins lifeblood over the snow and down his own arm. He wasn’t dying for that simpering bitch.
The other warrior grunted at the murder. He was one of their fathers old hands. Grizzled men who had seen many a hard things done in a hard land, though his eyes spoke of some sadness. However he did nothing, perhaps realising this had saved his life. He turned and raised his face over some logs to see where the enemy was. That’s when the arrow appeared.
Now.
Fuck this.
He ran again down a narrow alley between huts before gritting teeth and bowling straight through the door of his fathers now empty house. He smashed at the lock on the chest under the bed. First things at the top were the mementoes his father and mother had kept all these years. A doll his sister had played with, long before she died, the carved wooden swords his father had made he and Thorfinn for mock childhood duels, his mothers braid taken before she was taken. He threw them against the wall and reached deeper.
In his fathers house he dug deeper in the chest. Gold, a fine fighting knife, some flashing jewels, a few of his mothers books wrapped in silk and his fathers horn.
The light from the open door was blocked from the doorway. He reached out, grabbed an old battleaxe leaning against the wall and whirled to face the attacker. Shit. His food rolled on his sisters doll and he went down to his left. Maybe not so shit, the raiders sword passed over his falling body about the right height to take his throat had it still been there. His own wild stroke skidded off the floor, but then bounced and lodged in the ankle of the attacker who howled and crumbled next to Iomhar. His hand moved faster than his brain and before he knew it he’d plunged the knife of his fathers into the throat of the screaming attacker. Another poor cut, in from the side and he had to work it about, with an unpleasant wet and strangely grinding sound, until the blood really started pumping. Gods why could targets not stay still!
Standing quickly and slipping a little in the pooling blood, he gave one last look around before running out the back door. And he kept going. The mooring with the boats and other half of the warband...his now he supposed, as long as the gold lasted..... was maybe seven hundred yards.
Fine normally, but this was high summer and the snowmelt made the ground a mire. An arrow thudded into the ground in front of him. Oh yes. And that to, far from ‘fine’. A quick glance over his shoulder was all he needed to know that this was the footrace of his life. A big man, fleet of foot had never been a term used to describe him, but his bloodline was of strong and enduring men.
Running hunched over the booty from his fathers house he veered backwards and forwards as arrows, and on occasion the crack of magiced lightening hit where he had recently been. The boat was unmoored and floating down the makeshift wharf gathering speed.
He saw Barrik rise in the stern and begin shouting words sounding like rolling thunder. He felt rather than saw the flash of lightning crash behind him cutting pursuit off. The sound a moment later deafened his ears making it feel like white hot needles were entering his brain. Picking himself up he staggered the rest of the way along the wharf and dove onto the boat not a moment before it moved away into the middle of the fast flowing rivemouth. The men not shooting bows back at the shore grinned at him and cheered half heartedly.
Iomhar barred his teeth in reply. He knew they smiled because of the sack of gold he carried rather than for him. Fuck it. He was alive.
“South...south of the Spine” he answered to the helmsmans question when they hit deeper water. The men looked around uncertainly. They’d not been back to the populated lands for more than 5 years.
He sneered off any questions and settled down in the hull. Now he would grieve for his brother.
Now
Fuck this.
Iomhar watched with detachment the warrior slowly kneel down next to him, armour holding him up after the arrow suddenly appeared deep in his face. There was little blood, strange, from where half of the oiled shaft stuck from just to the side of his nose. He grimaced as the man slowly toppled into the snow drift behind the shack. Not in sorrow, he was on his own now.
He lurched from his place of hiding and half scrambled half ran across the gap between the buildings, muddy snow slipping between his feet as he dove, well, fell if he was honest with himself, behind the latrine as arrows skipped of the buildings frame behind him.
Thorfinn, his brother, had insisted on the counter attack. Why? The women. His wife-to-be particularly. Foolhardy to risk themselves like this half of the lasses were captured prizes from other raids themselves. What happened to “to the victor goes the spoils”? The other thing Thorfinn had insisted on was Iomhar coming along, for “morale”. Bastard. But how could he refuse in front of his fathers men. Well now the women were still lost, Thorfin was slowly cooling on the mud and his fathers warband were all but gone as well.
A few moments ago.Years ago.
The two boy-men began to skin the bear grinning at each other over the carcase as slowly their hands stained red and the thick hide came away from the fat. He and Thorfinn had always been close. His bigger, stronger, blonde younger brother took after their father in all but brains. Thorfin was a good lad no doubt, but in Iomhars mind only just this side of stupid. He’d become the type of glorious warrior from the songs that made the young girls sweat in their sealskins, all brute and wild strength. Especially given their heritage...
“Argh!” He looked down and saw his skinning knife had pierced Thorfinns hand. After a moment of staring he grinned maliciously and twisted the knife before withdrawing it bringing a howl from his brother and starting the inevitable chase. Of course he was run down and hit from behind. Tumbling he came up in a crouch and looked at his advancing brother, a rage-snarl on his face and his own knife still in his good hand.
“ARKAX MULAK DARSHAD SSITZOK!” The horrible chant stung the air between them as Iomhar spoke the ancient tongue taught him by their mother.
His brothers rage vanished and Thorfinn shied away cowering in the snow looking at him with horror and fascination. After a minute Iomhar sighed and relaxed speaking normally to him to break the spell. The bear was too heavy for him alone.
Was he sorry for what he’d done? Yes. No. Did it matter? Thorfin had led them in wild charge up the main way of the settlement with half the warband. The other half of the men sent back to the waiting boats ran without looking back. Some old hands there. Reckon they knew a suicide when they saw one.
The charge ended under a hail of arrows and thrown fire and ice from casters so far hidden amongst the raiders. Fully eight mens souls torn away by the icy winds in those few instants. He had dragged his brother to the left as the steam of fire and ice covered them, the other one surviving warrior following them. Thorfinn was cursing all the gods and it had nothing to do with the fresh burns to his right side, it was because Iomhar had an iron grip on his belt.
“Let me go you coward! Those bastards will eat their own cocks if they’ve harmed Meg!“
“Don’t be a fucking idiot. We’ve one chance now to get out. They think us dead. Use that tiny brain for one fucking moment and you’ll see we can live!” There were perhaps 30 of the dragon cult out there. Death enough for them all, even if his father had suspected it wasn’t death they were after...at least for he and his brother...probably something worse.
Thorfinn broke from Iomhars grip and he had to dive to catch him before he ran out and gave thier position away. For years his brothers golden hero routine had worn thin on Iomhar. And now as all their lives were to be thrown away on some woman, enough was enough. As he pulled him back his long knife came round and entered his brothers neck. The sound of steel grinding on rock as the knife jarred his hand. Shit. He has lodged the blade in his neck bones. His brothers head thrown back wide eyes and a choking sound came from his throat. Taking the knife out he rammed it back in further forward and then tore outwards spraying Thorfins lifeblood over the snow and down his own arm. He wasn’t dying for that simpering bitch.
The other warrior grunted at the murder. He was one of their fathers old hands. Grizzled men who had seen many a hard things done in a hard land, though his eyes spoke of some sadness. However he did nothing, perhaps realising this had saved his life. He turned and raised his face over some logs to see where the enemy was. That’s when the arrow appeared.
Now.
Fuck this.
He ran again down a narrow alley between huts before gritting teeth and bowling straight through the door of his fathers now empty house. He smashed at the lock on the chest under the bed. First things at the top were the mementoes his father and mother had kept all these years. A doll his sister had played with, long before she died, the carved wooden swords his father had made he and Thorfinn for mock childhood duels, his mothers braid taken before she was taken. He threw them against the wall and reached deeper.
NowA few years ago.
They had moved from place to place all their lives but always in that savage and trackless north. They were always setting up a transient settlement well away from the known ways. Always there were men around them, hard fighting men, and sometimes a few others with other talents. Gold made for stronger allies that blood his father had said. As long as you had more of it than the other. To be honest thought his father, seven foot tall and a shining beacon of golden power, was also a man that others were drawn to even without coins passing. Something he had said of Iomhar in his gentler moments.
Thorfinn and their sister never got on. Ollinda, the middle child, named ‘Bloodeye’ for the burnished scarlet shine of her pupils, was always teasing him when younger, and viciously insulting and demeaning him when older often resulting in a fight. Gold and red fighting, just as in the tales. Iomhar, with his fathers blonde hair stained with the red rust of his mothers colours sometimes broke up these fights, and sometimes watched them smiling to himself. Only a few times he thought one would kill the other.
She was the most beautiful young women any of them had ever seen, except perhaps since their mother had left. But she also shared her mothers taste for magic, and magic of a darker stain much to his fathers chargin. Father and daughter often had blazing rows as the chief watched his daughter spiral into her sorcerous ways, regularly resulting in servants holding foul smelling somethings under the nose and snow to her bruised face. Women do not speak to men that way out in the ice. Not even a daughter to her father.
Finally it came to a head after she had forced her control over the minds of his guards and made them fight over her to both of their deaths...the victor grinning foolishly as his heart beat it’s last thump. Father and daughter raged at each other shouting and screeching echoing off the walls of the glacier near the camp. Iomhar watched as finally words of power were spoken and fire bust from the outstretched claws of his sister to engulf father. He did nothing. The conflagration stopped and his father stood, unharmed with a baleful gaze turned to Ollinda who stood, chest heaving, in wide eyed terror and maybe some sorrow. Faster than the eye his father was on her a hand at her throat lifting her and throwing her, like no more than a snowball, twenty feet across the camp. He walked towards her as she scrambled backwards on her arse slipping along the ice. Just before he reached her she cried words and shot into the air flying south, for good it seems.
He looked at his father. One day he wanted that power.
In his fathers house he dug deeper in the chest. Gold, a fine fighting knife, some flashing jewels, a few of his mothers books wrapped in silk and his fathers horn.
The light from the open door was blocked from the doorway. He reached out, grabbed an old battleaxe leaning against the wall and whirled to face the attacker. Shit. His food rolled on his sisters doll and he went down to his left. Maybe not so shit, the raiders sword passed over his falling body about the right height to take his throat had it still been there. His own wild stroke skidded off the floor, but then bounced and lodged in the ankle of the attacker who howled and crumbled next to Iomhar. His hand moved faster than his brain and before he knew it he’d plunged the knife of his fathers into the throat of the screaming attacker. Another poor cut, in from the side and he had to work it about, with an unpleasant wet and strangely grinding sound, until the blood really started pumping. Gods why could targets not stay still!
Standing quickly and slipping a little in the pooling blood, he gave one last look around before running out the back door. And he kept going. The mooring with the boats and other half of the warband...his now he supposed, as long as the gold lasted..... was maybe seven hundred yards.
Fine normally, but this was high summer and the snowmelt made the ground a mire. An arrow thudded into the ground in front of him. Oh yes. And that to, far from ‘fine’. A quick glance over his shoulder was all he needed to know that this was the footrace of his life. A big man, fleet of foot had never been a term used to describe him, but his bloodline was of strong and enduring men.
Running hunched over the booty from his fathers house he veered backwards and forwards as arrows, and on occasion the crack of magiced lightening hit where he had recently been. The boat was unmoored and floating down the makeshift wharf gathering speed.
He saw Barrik rise in the stern and begin shouting words sounding like rolling thunder. He felt rather than saw the flash of lightning crash behind him cutting pursuit off. The sound a moment later deafened his ears making it feel like white hot needles were entering his brain. Picking himself up he staggered the rest of the way along the wharf and dove onto the boat not a moment before it moved away into the middle of the fast flowing rivemouth. The men not shooting bows back at the shore grinned at him and cheered half heartedly.
Iomhar barred his teeth in reply. He knew they smiled because of the sack of gold he carried rather than for him. Fuck it. He was alive.
“South...south of the Spine” he answered to the helmsmans question when they hit deeper water. The men looked around uncertainly. They’d not been back to the populated lands for more than 5 years.
He sneered off any questions and settled down in the hull. Now he would grieve for his brother.
As a boy.
His mother had left the week red wings had burst from her back. The mad triumphant and at the same time agonising screaming had driven most from the keep they lived in. Servants finally driven over the edge never returned.
He knew little of what happened but his father had said that they had disagreed on things for a long time before then. He would not be drawn. All that he knew was that that year was the last they lived in any place of grandeur. From then they were on the run.
Who did they run from? The Cult of the Dragon the men said.
Why? They whispered of the mother, and looked sadly at Iomhar, Thorfinn and Ollinda. His father feared nothing, nothing but losing them.